A power splitting Passive Optical Network (PON) is a point-to-multipoint, fiber to the premises network architecture in which unpowered optical splitters or couplers are used to enable a single optical fiber, commonly referred to as a “trunk fiber” to serve multiple premises, typically 32-128 premises, which are connected to the optical splitters or couplers via “drop” fibers. The unpowered optical splitters or couplers conventionally are fused fiber optic splitters or couplers in which optical fibers are fused together to provide power splitting. A power splitting PON includes an Optical Line Terminal (OLT) at the service provider's central office, and a number of Optical Network Units (ONUs) near end users.
A power splitting passive optical network configuration can reduce the amount of fiber and central office equipment that may be needed compared with various point-to-point architectures. Downstream signals from an optical line terminal are power split to provide a number of reduced power downstream signals to a number of optical network units by sharing a single trunk fiber to broadcast the reduced power downstream signals to the respective premises. Encryption may be used to prevent eavesdropping. Upstream signals from a number of optical network units to an optical line terminal are combined using a multiple access protocol, which may be a time division multiple access (TDMA) protocol. The optical line terminal may avoid contention by providing timeslot assignments to the respective optical network units for upstream communication.